Some Thoughts on the 1945 Retro Hugo Awards Finalists

Here is the first of the long awaited post about the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists. Not too long, I hope, but since I'm a Hugo finalist myself this year, I took some time off to celebrate, congratulate fellow finalists and update everything that needed updating. My thoughts about the 2020 Hugo Award finalists may be found here, by the way.

As regular readers of this blog probably know, I started the 1945 Retro Hugo Awards Recommendation Spreadsheet and also reviewed eligible works at this blog to help potential nominators to make more informed choices. And that's why I was extremely interested to see what, if any, impact the spreadsheet and the Retro Reviews project had.

I have also added the tag "1945 Retro Hugo finalist" to every finalist we reviewed to make it easier for Retro Hugo voters to find the relevant reviews.

ETA: Paul Fraser also shares his thoughts on the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists (and the 2020 Hugo finalists).

ETA II: FontFolly shares his thoughts on the 2020 Hugo and 1945 Retro Hugo finalists.

ETA III: Adventures Fantastic shares their thoughts on the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists.

So let's take a look at the individual categories:

 

Best Novel:

Science fiction was a short fiction genre during the golden age and so the best novel category at the Retro Hugos is often fairly weak or full of left-field finalists. 1945 is no exception, though we do have some good finalists. Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord by Olaf Stapledon is probably the most obvious finalist in this category and also a really good novel. Don Briago reviewed it for Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Shadow Over Mars a.k.a. The Nemesis from Terra by Leigh Brackett is another fine novel from one of the greats of the golden age. I reviewed it here.

I didn't review Land of Terror by Edgar Rice Burroughs, largely because my Pellucidar collection only includes the first three novels. But it's not an unexpected finalist, though Edgar Rice Burroughs is somewhat hampered by the fact that he wrote his best works before there even was a Worldcon, let alone Hugos, so he has never really been honoured.

I'm not a huge fan of A.E. van Vogt, so I did not cover The Winged Man by van Vogt and his wife E. Mayne Hull, but it's not an unexpected finalist, since van Vogt is clearly popular with Retro Hugo voters.

The Golden Fleece by Robert Graves is a left-field finalist, but a very deserving work. I didn't review it, but Steve J. Wright did. The other left-field finalist is The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, a beloved children's book, which I have not (yet) read, but look forward to trying.

Finalists covered at Retro Reviews: 2 of 6

Diversity count: 5 men, 2 women, 5 international writers

 

Best Novella:

"Killdozer!" by Theodore Sturgeon is probably the best known finalist in this category and a worthy one, too. Don Briago reviewed it for Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

"The Jewel of Bas" by Leigh Brackett is a great planetary romance novella and probably my favourite of the finalists in this category. I reviewed it here.

"A God Named Kroo" by Henry Kuttner was on my list to review, but I didn't get around to it in time. I didn't review "Trog" by Murray Leinster either, though Steve J. Wright did. Since I'm not a van Vogt fan, I didn't review "The Changeling", though again Steve J. Wright did.

I'm not at all familiar with "Intruders from the Stars" by Ross Rocklynne, though it is listed on the spreadsheet.

Finalists covered at Retro Reviews: 2 of 6

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, 1 international author

 

Best Novelette:

C.L. Moore is represented three times in this category, once with her solo story "No Woman Born" and twice together with her husband Henry Kuttner with "The Children's Hour" and "When the Bough Breaks". All three are excellent stories. I reviewed "No Woman Born" and "When the Bough Breaks", but didn't get around to "The Children's Hour" yet.

I'm not at all surprised that "The Big and the Little" by Isaac Asimov was nominated, since it's a Foundation story. And while it has its share of flaws, it certainly is interesting. I reviewed it here.

"City" by Clifford D. Simak is another finalist that's absolutely no surprise, since it is the title story of a beloved cycle/series and besides, Simak was a very good writer. I reviewed two of the four eligible City stories, but not this one.

"Arena" by Fredric Brown is also no surprise, since it's a classic story that was even adapted as a Star Trek episode.  It was also on my list of stories to review, but I didn't get around to it.

I'm a little sad that the two eligible Leigh Brackett novelettes didn't make it, though Leigh Brackett is well represented elsewhere on this ballot. And while "Iron Mask" by Robert Bloch, "Highwayman of the Void" by Frederik Pohl and "Ride the EL to Doom" by Allison V. Harding were all long shots (and the Retro Hugo administrators might well have killed me, if they had to try to track down Harding's heirs, considering she is an enigma), I would have been thrilled to see them here.

Finalists covered at Retro Reviews: 3 of 6

Diversity count: 5 men (Henry Kuttner twice) and 3 women, all of whom are C.L. Moore.

 

Best Short Story:

"Desertion" and "The Huddling Place" by Clifford D. Simak are both City stories, both excellent and utterly unsurprising finalists. I reviewed them here and here.

"The Wedge" by Isaac Asimov is the other Foundation story of 1944. It's usually considered one of the weaker entries in the series, though I liked it better than "The Big and the Little". I reviewed it here.

Ray Bradbury had twelve eligible stories in 1944 and none of the ones I read were bad. "I, Rocket" was not the Bradbury story I expected to make the ballot, though it is a good choice. But then, there are no bad choices with Ray Bradbury. I reviewed the story here.

I didn't review "Far Centaurus" by A.E. van Vogt, because I just don't care for his work. Though "Far Centaurus" is a famous story and also one of the first generation ship stories.

"And the Gods Laughed" by Fredric Brown is a story that never even appeared on my radar, even though it is listed in the spreadsheet.

Finalists covered at Retro Reviews: 4 of 6

Diversity count: 6 men (Clifford D. Simak twice), 1 international writer

 

Best Series:

This is one category where I really feel that the Retro Hugo spreadsheet made an impact. Because this is the first time ever that we even have this category at the Retro Hugos. And the reason why we never had it before is because people just didn't know what the nominate in this category.

The Shadow and Doc Savage are both pulp stalwarts that had been published for more than ten years by 1944. They may not be as well remembered as they once were, but they were hugely influential and their impact is felt to this day. Doc Savage influenced everything from Superman to The A-Team, while The Shadow was one of the influences on Batman. Both are highly deserving of recognition, even if the glory days of both series are somewhat behind them by 1944.

Captain Future, created by Edmond Hamilton, hasn't really had the same impact on popular culture at large, but it had a huge impact on me, because the 1979 Captain Future anime series was one of my foundational science fiction experiences which made me a fan, so I'm really thrilled to see the good Captain here as well as Otho, Grag, Simon Wright (whose spiritual descendant is helping astronauts aboard the ISS) and Joan Randall.

A collection of the first three Pellucidar books was my first contact with the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and my teenaged self certainly loved it. Also, as I said above, Burroughs has never really been honoured by the Hugos, because he wrote his best works long before there even was a Worldcon.

The Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft and friends, represented in 1944 by two August Derleth stories, is one of the great classics of our genre, no matter how you feel about Lovecraft. It's also still going strong and getting new additions, including many that would horrify Lovecraft, and therefore a highly deserving finalist.

The occult detective Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn may be somewhat forgotten these days, but he was a mainstay of Weird Tales for more than twenty year. In their time, the Jules de Grandin stories were more popular than Cthulhu or Conan and single-handedly saved Weird Tales from bankruptcy more than once.

No diversity count, because most of these series were written by more than one person. Those persons were generally male, though.

 

Best Related Work:

This is the other category where I feel that the Retro Hugo Spreadsheet really made an impact, because this another category we didn't have at all for the golden age Retro Hugos, because no one knew what to nominate. I also want to thank everybody who helped to hunt down these works, some of which were not easy to find. We also have a nice variety of very different works here.

Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere by Willy Ley and Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom by George Gamow are two good popular science books. The Willy Ley book is apparently so good that the Bremen University library still has several copies (plus two more at the library of the Technical College), even though the book is 75 years old.

42 To ’44: A Contemporary Memoir Upon Human Behavior During the Crisis of the World Revolution by H.G. Wells is a non-fiction book by one of the founding fathers of our genre who has never been recognised by the Hugos either, because like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Wells did his best work well before there were Hugo Awards or even a Worldcon.

Fancyclopedia 1 by Jack Speer is the first attempt to chronicle fandom, while it was still in its very early years and another highly deserving finalist. It's also a project that still exists 75 years later, now as an online Wiki.

Finally, we have two fine essays: “The Science-Fiction Field” by Leigh Brackett is an article from Writers Digest that is remarkably difficult to locate (and we certainly tried). Supposedly, she talks about her experiences as a woman writing science fiction during the golden age, so I hope someone who has a copy will put it up for Retro Hugo voters to read.

“The Works of H.P. Lovecraft: Suggestions for a Critical Appraisal” by Fritz Leiber, published in the fanzine The Acolyte, does exactly what it says on the tin. I suspect I am at least partly responsible for this nomination, because I stumbled across The Acolyte, when I checked out Fritz Leiber's 1944 publication credits, found the zine online at Fanac.org, liked what I read and entered the essay as well as the fanzine and Fritz Leiber as a fanwriter into the spreadsheet. Since the essay, The Acolyte and Fritz Leiber as fanwriter  all got nominations, I suspect other Retro Hugo nominators must have agreed.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, 1 international writer (I'm counting immigrants Willy Ley and George Gamow as Americans here)

 

Best Graphic Story/Comic:

Flash Gordon is represented twice in this category with "Battle for Tropica" and "Triumph in Tropica". These are the last Flash Gordon strips drawn and written by Alex Raymond who was about to depart for Rip Kirby, so I really hope that Alex Raymond, who was the best artist drawing for the newspaper strips at the time, will finally get the recognition he deserves.

Buck Rogers is the other newspaper strip on the ballot and was the original science fiction adventure strip, long before Flash Gordon came along. Though I have to admit that I always preferred Flash to Buck.

The Spirit is one of the great classics of the era, even though the nominated story was not drawn by Will Eisner. But it was written by Manly Wade Wellman.

Carl Barks was the most iconic artist ever to draw Donald Duck and pretty much created the world that is known as "Entenhausen" (duckville) in German. His comics are classics and I'm really glad to see him honoured here.

The American superhero comic is represented here by the Superman story “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk” which introduces a classic antagonist.

Good choices all and also a nice look at the variety of comics available during this era from serialised newspaper strips via superheroes to funny animals. Though I'm a bit sad that The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician didn't make the ballot again.

Diversity count: All men, all Americans

 

Best Dramatic Presentation Short:

There is no Best Dramatic Presentation Long category at the Retro Hugos this year, so works like The Uninvited, Between Two Worlds, The Halfway House, the stage production of Huis Clos or The Phantom and Captain America serials sadly don't get a shot at winning a Retro Hugo.

One of the Best Dramatic Presentation Short finalists, The Canterville Ghost, is actually a longform finalist at 95 minutes, though it still falls within the grace range. It's also a nice adaptation of a fantasy classic.

The Curse of the Cat People is a sequel to the 1943 Retro Hugo finalist Cat People and often considered superior to the original. It Happened Tomorrow is a time paradox movie adapted from a story by Lord Dunsany and a minor classic.

House of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man's Revenge are the sort of Universal extruded monster product that was typical for the SFF cinema of the era. Both are also the upteenth inferior sequel to a good original. Sorry to be so direct, but everybody involved with these films is dead anyway and it's unlikely I will insult the ghost of Curt Siodmak or Ford Bebee. The Invisible Man's Revenge is also the only 1945 Retro Hugo finalist that is not listed in the spreadsheet. For some reason, we completely missed this one, though Retro Hugo nominators did not.

Donovan's Brain, finally, is an example of an art form that was enormously popular during this period, but that is rarely represented at the Retro Hugos, namely the radio drama. I'm always happy to see a vintage radio drama on the shortlist, because they are often overlooked compared to movies and are also generally better than the extruded monster product that so often dominates the Dramatic Presentation categories at the Retro Hugos.

No diversity count, too many people are involved in making movies or radio dramas.

 

Best Editor Short:

There are absolutely no surprises in this category. John W. Campbell is the oft nominated and just as often winning editor of Astounding Science Fiction. He will probably not be on top of my ballot, if only because someone else deserves a shot for once, but he definitely deserves to be here.

Dorothy McIllwraith's tenure at Weird Tales may have been overshadowed by Farnsworth Wright's, but I have been very impressed by the output of Weird Tales during the 1940s. A highly deserving finalist I would love to see win for once.

W. Scott Peacock was the editor of Planet Stories, while Oscar J. Friend edited Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Captain Future. Their respective magazines may be overlooked compared to Astounding and Weird Tales, but I found the stories I reviewed from Planet Stories, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories consistently entertaining. In fact, those lesser mags are probably more consistent with regard to quality than Astounding, for while Astounding published a lot of classics, they also published a lot of dross.

Raymond A. Palmer's time as the editor of Amazing Stories is sadly overshadowed by the Shaver mystery nonsense. But the first Shaver mystery story wasn't even published until the following year and in 1944, Palmer was doing good work. I reviewed fewer stories from Amazing than from Astounding or Planet Stories or Weird Tales, but the ones I reviewed were all good.

I'm a bit surprised to see Mary Gnaedinger, editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, on the ballot. Not because she didn't do good work, she did. But Famous Fantastic Mysteries published no new fiction in 1944, only reprints.

Diversity count: 4 men, 2 women

 

Best Professional Artist:

Iconic Weird Tales cover artist Margaret Brundage is a frequent finalist in this category, but so far hasn't won. I really hope that this will be her year, if only because she's about to move out of SFF art and we won't have many more chances to recognise her. Besides, her cover and interior artwork for the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales, illustrating "Iron Mask" by Robert Bloch, is lovely and the woman on the cover is even fully dressed for once. Not that I mind the nudes - few people painted better nudes than Margaret Brundage. But it seems to me as if her work is just a little too sexy for modern sensibilities.

Earle Bergey was responsible for the striking and lurid covers of Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories and Captain Future, wherein men are manly, women were brass bikinis and monsters are bug-eyed and menace damsels in distress. His work is great fun and few artists were as good at painting bug-eyed monsters and ladies in brass bikinis as Earle Bergey. Who cares that most of the scenes he illustrated never happened that way in the actual story.

Boris Dolgov provided the interior art for many an issue of Weird Tales. His work is always striking and atmospheric, particularly his two page spread for "Ride the EL to Doom" by Allison V. Harding and I'm really happy to see him recognised.

Matt Fox is responsible for the cover of the November 1944 issue of Weird Tales, which depicts Cthulhu in all his terrible glory. I think this is the only time Cthulhu ever appeared on the cover. For some reason, Weird Tales' most famous characters - Conan, Cthulhu, Solomon Kane, Jules de Grandin - hardly ever appeared on the cover of the magazine, probably because Margaret Brundage would rather draw semi-nude women, who also sold better than tentacled monstrosities.

Paul Orban provided the interior art for many an issue of Astounding Science Fiction as well as for The Shadow and Doc Savage. He is not listed in the spreadsheet, so here is another 1945 Retro Hugo finalist we missed.

William Timmins, finally, was the cover artist for Astounding Science Fiction throughout WWII and also provided interior art. I have to admit that prefer the more lurid end of the pulp market, but Timmins did provide some striking covers for Astounding in 1944 such as this one and this one.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman. All American, though Dolgov and Orban are immigrants.

 

Best Fanzine:

Futurian War Digest, Shangri L'Affaires, Voice of the Imagi-Nation and Le Zombie are all repeat finalists in this category and they all did good work. Diablerie is completely new to me, though it is listed on the spreadsheet.

The Acolyte, finally, is a zine focussed on weird fiction and the works of H.P. Lovecraft that I discovered when I checked out the 1944 publication credits for Fritz Leiber and Anthony Boucher. So I checked it out on Fanac.org and was quite impressed with what I found, so I put it on the spreadhseet. Evidently, other Retro Hugo nominators agreed with me, because it made the ballot.

Diversity count: 8 men, 1 woman

 

Best Fan Writer:

Once again, we have several repeat finalists in this category. Jack Speer, Bob Tucker and Harry Warner Jr. have all been nominated in this category before, as was Myrtle R. Douglas a.k.a. Morojo, who invented cosplay and proves that women were always part of our genre. Jack Speer deserves particular recognition here, because he wrote and published the first Fancyclopedia in 1944, a project which still exists, though now online.

J. Michael Rosenblum was the editor of Futurian War Digest, a British fanzine I find consistently impressive. But for some reason, he has never been a Retro Hugo finalist himself, so I'm happy that the nominators rectified that oversight.

Fritz Leiber Jr. really needs no introduction, considering that he published countless of excellent novels and stories over his fifty-year career, won six Hugos, one Retro Hugo and countless other awards and co-created two of the most beloved fantasy characters of all time in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. So what is he doing on the Best Fanwriter ballot?

Well, I suspect I might have something to do with that. I'm a big Fritz Leiber fan, so I checked ISFDB for eligible 1944 works and came across not only a handful fo stories for Astounding (no Fafhrd and Gray Mouser in 1944, sadly, because the demise of Unknown the year before left them temporarily homeless) but also a story, an essay and a poem, all published in the fanzine The Acolyte. As I said above, I checked out The Acolyte, liked what I saw and put it on the spreadsheet. In addtion to his essay with suggestions for a critical appraisal of Lovecraft's work, which is nominated in the Best Related Work category, Fritz Leiber also contributed a short story entitled "Ervool" and a poem to The Acolyte. The poem, entitled "The Gray Mouser", will probably be familiar to quite a few readers, because it has been reprinted in the various Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collections over the years. So it isn't quite correct that Fafhrd and Gray Mouser were taking an extended break during the  late 1940s and early 1950s, because Gray Mouser at least was still active in a poem first published in a fairly obscure fanzine. Coincidentally, this poem also appears to be the first time that the wizard Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, a recurring character in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, was mentioned in print, since I don't recall Sheelba appearing in any of the stories published in Unknown. You can find the issue of The Acolyte which contains Fritz Leiber's fan writing output for 1944, online at Fanac.org BTW.

Diversity count: 5 men, 1 woman, 1 international writer

ETA: The good folks of Fanac.org has put together a list with links to samples of all nominated fanzines and fan writers to make voting easier.

It seems to me as if all the hard work I (and many others) put into the 1945 Retro Hugo Recommendation spreadsheet and Retro Science Fiction Reviews did make an impact, the spreadsheet probably more so than Retro Science Fiction Reviews. Cause I don't think that we would have had the Best Series and Best Related Work categories at all without the spreadsheet and the three nominations linked to The Acolyte can probably also be attributed to the spreadsheet.

I will be reviewing the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists that I missed the first time around and I'll definitely do a recommendation spreadsheet and Retro Reviews for the 1947 Retro Hugos, because the 1946 Retro Hugos were already awarded in 1996.

And that's it for the analysis of the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists.

Retro Review: "Citadel of Lost Ships" by Leigh Brackett

The finalists for the 1945 Retro Hugos will be announced tomorrow. But for now, I'll continue to take a look at some of the finalists for previous years of Retro Hugos. And today, I'll continue with a story that was not the best story on the ballot, neither in its respective category nor by the respective author, but that I nonetheless found extremely interesting and that I found myself thinking about a lot more than about many of the other Retro Hugo finalists of that year.

The story in question is "Citadel of Lost Ships", a space opera novelette by Leigh Brackett that was the cover story of the March 1943 issue of Planet Stories and was a finalist for the 1944 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

Roy Campbell, the protagonist of "Citadel of Lost Ships", is a typical example of the outlaw heroes Leigh Brackett was so fond of. He is also explicitly described as dark-skinned, even if cover artist Jerome Rozen portrays the character as white and blonde and a deadringer for Doc Savage as portrayed by Walter Baumhofer.

At the beginning of the story, Roy has narrowly escaped the Spaceguard and found refuge with the Kraylens, a tribe of native Venusians who have taken him in before. But there is trouble brewing in this peaceful Venusian paradise, for the exhausted and injured Roy is woken by war drums in the middle of the night.

Roy finally gets the story of what is going on from his Kraylen foster father. It turns out that oil, coal and other minerals have been discovered in the Venusian swamps near the Kraylens' home. And now the Terran-Venusian Coalition government is planning to take possession of the Kraylens' land to drain the swamps, drill for oil and mine the coal and other minerals (we wonder if the appropriately named Terran Exploitations Company is involved). The Kraylens will be resettled into reservations, where tourists can gawk at their primitive lifestyle. Understandably, the Kraylens are not fans of this plan. "We will die first," Roy's foster father says.

Roy wants to help the Kraylens. After all, they gave him a home when he needed one and hid him from the authorities several times thereafter. But Roy also sympathises with the Kraylens' plight in more ways than one, for we learn that he comes from a family of farmers who had been working the same plot of land for more than three hundred years, until they were displaced by a hydroelectric dam, victims of the same idea of progress and expansion that will now claim the Kraylens and their way of life.

Luckily, Roy has an idea. The travelling space station Romany, the titular "Citadel of Lost Ships" since it has been assembled from abandoned spaceships, has been offering refuge to those displaced by the imperialist expansion of the Terran-Venusian Coalition for a long time now. And Romany just happens to be in orbit around Venus, so maybe they can be persuaded to take in the Kraylens. It is worth a try at any rate.

So Roy sets off for Romany, narrowly evading yet another patrol ship on his way there. When he reaches the space station, he isn't exactly given a warm welcome. The communications officer, a young black man from Mercury called Zard, treats him coolly and his boss, an Earthman called Tredrick, blows him off and tells Roy that Romany cannot help the Kraylens and that he shall leave. However, shortly after Tredrick has broken contact, Roy receives a message from Zard telling him to dock at one of the ships that make up Romany. Because, so the young man tells him, there are some who still consider Romany a refuge.

Roy docks as instructed and is promptly knocked out by a one-armed Martian named Marah, who mistakes him for a spy for Tredrick. Once that misunderstanding has been cleared up, Roy learns from Marah and a human telepath named Stella Moore what is going on aboard Romany.

It turns out that Romany is on the edge of a civil war between those like Stella, Marah and Zard who want to continue living according to their own code and help those in need, even if it pisses off the Coalition government, and a group led by Tredrick and the station council who want to stop interfering with the Coalition's plans in exchange for better trading rights and constant orbits. Tredrick's fraction is about to move against the rebels when Roy blunders in.

Stella promises Roy that the rebels will rescue the Kraylens. In exchange, Roy promises that he'll stick around and help the rebels – for the Kraylens' sake and because Roy sympathises with the rebels and their cause.

Romany is a fascinating setting, an assembly of spaceships whose interior not only houses members of many different races, but also mimics their natural environment, i.e. the Venusian quarter has swamp vegetation, while the Titanian quarter has ice caves. Sadly, Leigh Brackett never revisited Romany, though it's spiritual descendants still abound in science fiction, ranging from Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine to Alpha, the City of a Thousand Planets, from the Valérian and Laureline comics and the recent film adaptation by Luc Besson.

The rebels are planning to take a ship and rescue the Kraylens, but before they can get there, they find their way blocked by Tredrick and his men. Tredrick informs everybody that Romany cannot help the Kraylens, not anymore, because the Kraylens have already been imprisoned for harbouring the dangerous criminal Roy Campbell. And even though Roy used a false name, when contacting Romany, Tredrick knows that he is aboard the station and warns everybody who helps him of dire consequences.

The rebels pretend to comply with Tredrick's orders, while Stella and Marah help Roy escape. Roy manages to make his getaway just before the Spaceguard arrives, which leads to yet another chase, as the Guard ships pursue Roy and his ship. Roy's ship is fatally damaged in the resulting firefight. Roy himself is badly wounded, but nonetheless he gets into a spacesuit and steps out of the airlock. He hides among the debris of his damaged and dying ship – a manoeuvre that Roy's spiritual descendant Han Solo would use again some thirty-seven years later in The Empire Strikes Back, the original screenplay of which was also penned by Leigh Brackett – and then uses the jetpack of his spacesuit to descend to Venus. Of course, Roy would have gotten burned up upon entering the atmosphere, but pulp space operas don't care about such inconvenient scientific facts.

Back on Venus, Roy meets up with Marah, Stella and their motley crew of alien rebels, who took a ship from Romany to rescue the Kraylens. Together, they head for the Venusian city of Lhi, where the Kraylens have been imprisoned.

However, Tredrick pre-empted their move and has put the Kraylens under heavy guard. But one of the rebels, a man from the Jovian moon Callisto, uses his magical harp to put the guards to sleep. But when Roy and his friends free the Kraylens, Tredrick himself shows up with more guards. A firefight erupts and Roy and Stella find themselves face to face with Tredrick himself.

Now we briefly get Tredrick's motivation for turning on his own people. Tredrick explains that even though he was born on Romany, he was never happy there and didn't care for the freedom Romany offered, since that freedom also meant poverty. So Tredrick decided to rise through the ranks, take over Romany and make a deal with the Coalition government to ensure prosperity for all. Roy and the Kraylens as well as Stella, Marah and the rebels stand in his way, so Tredrick decided to use the Coalition forces to get rid of them.

Roy launches himself at Tredrick and the two men engage in a furious fight. But Roy is weakened from his injuries and therefore he is losing. Just as Tredrick is about to kill Roy, Stella intervenes and uses her telepathic abilities to kill Tredrick.

Roy tells Stella to lead the others to safety. He will stay behind and take the blame for the death of Tredrick and the escape of the Kraylens. Because, so Roy tells Stella, the Coalition government needs a scapegoat for what happened on Venus. And if they cannot use Roy as a scapegoat, they will go after Romany. And Romany has no chance against the combined might of the Terran-Venusian Coalition. But if Roy sacrifices himself, Romany gets to remain free.

"You're wonderful," a tearful Stella tells Roy, "I didn't realize how wonderful."

Roy promises Stella that he won't be in prison for long and that he'll escape. He also says that he hopes Romany will remember him and maybe erect a statue in his honour, because he will be back. Then he waits to be arrested, while Stella flees with the Kraylens.

"Citadel of Lost Ships" is exactly the kind of glorious and thrilling pulp space opera that Leigh Brackett excelled at. However, the story also has a strong undercurrent of social criticism. Now a lot of Leigh Brackett's early stories were critical of imperialism and capitalism and often featured marginalised protagonists. "Citadel of Lost Ships", however, features Leigh Brackett in full social justice warrior mode.

Stylistically, "Citadel of Lost Ships" is very much a story of its time. It's set in the pulp science fiction shared solar system and its full of the usual anachronisms such as finned rocket ships, people smoking in space and Roy Campbell surviving re-entry in a spacesuit. On the other hand, "Citadel of Lost Ships" is exactly the opposite of the prevalent stereotype of golden age science fiction. "Citadel of Lost Ships" couldn’t be further from the ideals of Campbellian science fiction (and John W. Campbell did not publish it – Malcom Reiss of Planet Stories did). Furthermore, the themes Leigh Brackett tackles – the impact of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism, the treatment of indigenous people, the sacrificing of people in the name of progress – are all themes that science fiction is still grappling with today.

The humans of the Terran-Venusian Coalition are clearly the bad guys jere and the story is very concerned with the treatment of what Roy Campbell calls “the little people”, many of whom are aliens who – in a genre tradition that would last well into modern times – stand in for various marginalised groups in the real world. The plight of the Kraylen is clearly intended to criticise the treatment of Native Americans – and let’s not forget that the Wounded Knee Massacre took place only twenty-five years before Leigh Brackett was born, while the last conflicts between Native Americans and representatives of the (white) authorities happened within Brackett’s lifetime, i.e. those events were still very much within living memory, when “Citadel of Lost Ships” was published. Romany, the name of the space station, refers to the Romani people and indeed, Stella explains at one point that the station and its inhabitants are welcomed as traders but otherwise “hated, just as gypsies [Brackett’s word choice, not mine] always are.” This is not the only time that the Romani people feature in Leigh Brackett's stories of the golden age either. "The Jewel of Bas", published a year later, also features a heroic Romani protagonist.

Roy Campbell's father losing the family farm to a hydroelectric dam project, an event which psychologically scarred Roy and set him on the path towards crime, also echoes actual events of the time the story was written. Because the 1930s and 1940s were the age of the great hydroelectric dam projects in the US like the Hoover Dam (then still known as the Boulder Dam) or the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933. These hydroelectric dams displaced (and were still displacing when the story was written) farmers, families and sometimes whole towns in the name of progress. It’s very difficult to find critical voices about the Tennessee Valley Authority Act or the Boulder/Hoover Dam even today (the displaced farmers and flooded towns are usually just a footnote), so to find one in 1943 is quite remarkable.

Furthermore, people are still facing displacement due to hydroelectric dams and strip mining operations today, whether it's the historic Turkish town of Hasankeyf about to be flooded by the waters of the river Tigris due to the Ilisu Dam or the people of the Garzweiler and the Lausitz regions in Germany who have lost or are still about to lose their homes to lignite coal strip mining, even though lignite coal is extremely harmful to the environment and will be phased out in the next ten to twenty years anyway. So the issues addressed by "The Citadel of Lost Ships" are not in the distant past – they're still current today.

Roy Campbell is one of my favourite Leigh Brackett characters. In many ways, Roy Campbell feels like a prototype for Eric John Stark, who would come along six years later. Like Stark, Campbell is a man of colour, like Stark he does not fit into regular human society, like Stark he found a home with an indigenous tribe, only to lose it again, when those indigenous people were displaced and slaughtered in the name of progress. But while Eric John Stark is generally a good man, Roy Campbell is probably the noblest character Leigh Brackett ever created, even though Roy sees himself as anything but a hero. I also doubt it's an accident that this noble outlaw and hero of colour shares a surname with the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, a man who would become infamous for his reactionary views regarding race, gender and politics. Was this Leigh Brackett's way of giving John W. Campbell the finger?

In many ways, it's a pity that Brackett never revisited Roy Campbell. Did he manage to escape from the prison mines of Phobos (in the pulp science fiction shared solar system, moons are inevitably prisons)? Did he even go to prison in the first place or did the Coalition authorities just shoot him, because the whole affair was too embarrassing? Did Roy get that statue and did he ever get to see Stella again? We'll never know.

Roy Campbell also sums up the point of the story on the final page, when he says:

“They’re building, Stella. When they’re finished they’ll have a big, strong, prosperous empire extending all across the System, and the people who belong to that empire will be happy.
“But before you can build you have to grade and level, destroy the things that get in your way. We’re the things – the tree-stumps and the rocks that grew in the way and can’t be changed.
“They’re building; they’re growing. You can’t stop that. In the end it’ll be a good thing, I suppose. But right now, for us…”

So much for the claim that the golden age was unpolitical and all about fun science fiction and/or that the science fiction of the time promoted the unquestioning belief in science and progress and the unquestioning acceptance of colonialism. Cause here we have a story from 1943 that is very much about social justice warriors in the most literal sense of the word fighting against human imperialism.

But don't let my analysis of the political background of the story scare you off. Because "The Citadel of Lost Ships" is a cracking good pulp space opera, whether you agree with its politics or not.

The novelette category of the 1944 Retro Hugos was uncommonly strong and so "The Citadel of Lost Ships" lost out to the excellent, if very different "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by Lewis Padgett a.k.a. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. And much as I enjoyed this story, it was not in first place on my ballot either, if only because I love Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser even more and "Thieves' House" is the best of the early Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories published in Unknown. And indeed, reviewing the early Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories is a project to tackle, once I've dealt with the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists I missed.

"The Citadel of Lost Ships" is one of the lesser known Leigh Brackett stories of this era. It has been reprinted a few times, but not nearly as frequently as many of her other stories. This is a pity, because "The Citadel of Lost Ships" is a great story that deserves to be better known.

Retro Review: "Exile" by Edmond Hamilton

Now that we're waiting for the finalists for the 1945 Retro Hugos to be announced, let's take the time to look at some of the finalists for previous years of Retro Hugos. I'll start off with "Exile", a science fantasy short story by Edmond Hamilton that was published in the May 1943 issue of Super Science Stories and was a finalist for the 1944 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"Exile" begins with four science fiction writers – Madison, Brazell, Carrick and the narrator – sitting around the fireplace, sipping whiskey and talking about hunting, baseball and science fiction. The narrator remarks that all four of them are trying very hard to seem like ordinary, solid citizens, even though they don't feel at home in this world and never will. They all want something different, something more, that's why they became science fiction writers in the first place.

Brazell points out that the fact that they get paid for it is a large part of the reason why they all write. The narrator agrees that yes, the money is important, but that they nonetheless all dreamt up stories and new worlds long before they were paid for it, even long before they started to write down their stories, because none of them fit in the real world.

"We'd feel a lot less at home in some of the worlds we write about," Madison says, whereupon Carrick pipes in, "That happened to me. I once wrote about an imaginary world and then I had to live in it."

Of course, everybody is eager for the story, so Carrick delivers it. It happened, he says, after he moved out to the edge of the city right next to a new power station, because it was quiet there and he needed the quiet to write. Carrick was about to start writing a new series of stories all set in the same world, so he began to create the world and its inhabitants. He made the inhabitants human, but he also made them and their world less civilized and more superstitious and barbarian than the real world, because that would provide conflict and fiction needs conflict.

Carrick is so engrossed in his worldbuilding that he suddenly experiences a click in his brain, as if the world he created and its people had crystallized into existence in another reality, likely due to the energy generated by the power station next door. Then Carrick wonders what would happen if he imagined himself living in that world and creates a character and history for himself.

There is another click and Carrick suddenly finds himself in his imaginary world, as if he'd been born there and always lived there. Carrick is excited at first, as he goes out and walks the streets of the world he created and looks at the people he dreamt up. But eventually, he becomes unhappy, because the world he created is just too barbarian for him and all the things that had seemed exciting from a distance are repulsive and unpleasant close-up.

So Carrick tries to imagine himself back into his own world, only to find that it doesn't work. He's stuck. He considers killing himself, but eventually he adapts. Brazell asks Carrick what he did in the other world. Carrick explains that he didn't have the skills or the knowledge to do most of the jobs in the other world, so he did the only thing he could do. He wrote stories. He wrote stories about his own world, which seemed like science fiction to the inhabitants of the other world and made him popular.

Madison wants to know how Carrick got back in the end. "I never got home," Carrick says sadly, "I'm still here."

"Exile" is very short, only two and a half pages long in magazine format, but it sure packs a punch. It is an example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age, stories which exist only to deliver the final punchline. "Exile" wasn't even the only "twist in the tale" story on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov and "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch, both finalists in the same category, are "twist in the tale" stories as well.

"Exile" is however an excellent example of a "twist in the tale" story. It is a lot more effective than "Death Sentence" and on par with "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which is remarkable, because unlike the Robert Bloch story, "Exile" doesn't have much of a plot. It's merely a story about four people sitting around the fireplace, drinking whiskey and telling stories. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" by Stanton A. Coblentz is probably the closest comparison. But "Exile" is much better. In fact, it is remarkable how well this little story works.

I suspect part of the reason why "Exile" works so well is that it perfectly captures the sense of alienation that many writers and fans of speculative fiction feel. Like the unnamed narrator of Hamilton's story, a lot of us don't feel at home in the real world, so we dream up imaginary worlds. And while getting paid to write about adventures in imaginary worlds is a nice side-effect, many of us dreamt up stories and worlds long before we were ever paid to do it and would continue to do so, even if we didn't get paid for it.

But even if we don’t really fit into the real world, would we truly want to live in the worlds we create or could we even survive there? I guess, as with poor lost Carrick, the answer is no.

Even though there is a pseudoscientific explanation for Carrick's predicament, "Exile" is more portal fantasy than science fiction. It's not even the only portal fantasy on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Doorway into Time" by C.L. Moore, which was nominated in the same category, is also a portal fantasy. Furthermore, travel to parallel worlds/other planets by the power of imagination has been a common trope in speculative fiction ever since John Carter wished himself upon Mars in A Princess of Mars back in 1911. Edmond Hamilton himself would also revisit the idea of imaginary space/time travel via pseudoscientific means in his 1947 novel The Star Kings.

Considering that "Exile" is essentially a story about four science fiction writers sitting around and talking, the question is which real science fiction writers of the golden age, if any, do the four characters represent. When I read the story last year for the Retro Hugos, I assumed that Madison was a stand-in for Edmond Hamilton and that Brazell was a stand-in for his future wife Leigh Brackett due to the vaguely similar names. And indeed, I named the Hamilton and Brackett stand-ins in my Silencer novelette The Heavy Hand of the Editor, in which my fictional 1930s pulp author Richard Blakemore locks horns with John W. Campbell (or rather a Campbell stand-in called Donald Angus Stuart) and interacts with several real authors of the golden age, Ed Madison and Liz Brazell in homage to this story. However, Leo Morey's interior art for "Exile" shows only white men in suits (and reminds me visually of the Dover reprints of selected pages from old Sears catalogues more than anything), no women anywhere in sight. So is Brazell a stand-in for Ray Bradbury, who was after all friends with Hamilton and Brackett? Or am I completely mistaken and it's someone else?

What's even more interesting is who Carrick is supposed to be? Cause I would really like to know which science fiction writer of the golden age dreamt our world into existence. For that matter, I'd also like to know which author of apocalyptic fiction is responsible for our current reality. However, I really cannot come up with any SFF writer of the golden age who'd fit what little we learn about Carrick. Though Carrick does put in a cameo in The Heavy Hand of the Editor, if only because paying homage to obscure golden age science fiction stories is fun.

But even though "Exile" appeared in Super Science Stories, which was one of the lesser science fiction magazines of the early 1940s, it's not exactly an obscure story. At any rate, it's less obscure than some of the other stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. "Exile" has been reprinted several times and was selected for the Best of Edmond Hamilton collection that Leigh Brackett edited as well as for the anthology The Great SF Stories, Vol. 5, 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. And of course, "Exile" was well enough regarded that it won a nomination for the 1944 Retro Hugo Awards, even if it lost out to Ray Bradbury's excellent "R is for Rocket" a.k.a. "King of the Gray Spaces" in the end.

A fine story about alienation and the power of imagination and also a great example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age.